I collected these recommendations from my academy teacher and classmates.

Books

There aren’t too many books out there yet covering Whidbey, either the Framework or Visual Studio 2005. But there are a few. A few of the ones I know about are:

First Look at ADO.NET and System Xml v 2.0 (Addison Wesley)

by Alex Homer, Dave Sussman, Mark Fussell

·         This book appears to have a sequel available soon, with new and updated information.

ASP.NET v 2.0 – The Beta Version (Addison Wesley)

by Alex Homer, Dave Sussman, Rob Howard

·         Good first look at some of the new features available for ASP.NET.

The Microsoft Platform Ahead (MS Press)

by David S. Platt

·         A great book, by a fun to read author, covering a small subset of things to come. A good read, but only provides a taste of the great stuff in the Framework 2.0.

Introducing ASP.NET 2.0 (MS Press)

by Dino Esposito                         

·         I haven’t read this book yet, but it looks like it might be pretty good. Plus, it’s Dino Esposito, and he does a great writing job!

Introducing Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 for Developers (MS Press)

by Kris Horrocks, Sean Campbell, Derek Hatchard, Peter Bernhardt, Scott Swigart

·         I haven’t read this book yet, but it looks like it might be pretty good.  Plus, it’s Dino Esposito, and he does a great writing job!

Working with Visual Studio 2005 Team System (MS Press)

by Richard Hundhausen

·         Well, what can I say? This book offers a breadth look at Visual Studio Team System’s capabilities and benefits

ADO.NET 2.0 Advanced topics (MS Press)

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/7720.asp

Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 core reference (Esposito, Dino)

Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 step by step (Shepherd, George)

Others …

·         MSDN magazine (Microsoft Press)

·         Core C# and .NET (C# 2.0), Stephen C. Perry, Prentice Hall.

·         ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook, Wei-Meng Lee , O'Reilly.

Web Sites

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites out there with some information about the 2.0 version of the Framework. Some are better than others. I’m going to recommend just a few here, and throughout the course as we discover new ones, we’ll add to this list. 

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 site

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

Microsoft’s 2.0/2005 MSDN site

http://msdn2.microsoft.com

ASP.NET

http://www.asp.net

·         This site has a great daily article on some technology dealing with ASP.NET. Lately many of these articles have dealt with ASP.NET 2.0

WindowsForms.NET

http://www.windowsforms.net

·         This site is the Windows version of www.asp.net, and like it has great daily articles.  But also check out the Windows Forms 2.0 section

GotDotNet

http://www.gotdotnet.com

·         A good all around site, with many code gallery workspaces of interesting products and add-ons

DotNetRocks

http://www.dotnetrocks.com

·         Carl Franklin and company do a great job evangelizing the various tools and technologies surrounding the 2.0 Framework on the air– and it’s fun.

DotNetToTheMax

http://www.dotnet2themax.com/DotNetBrowser/ShowAssemblies.aspx

·         A great online repository for .NET developers. Includes many useful downloads, such as the assembly browser that allows you to see all the assemblies, namespaces, classes, properties, methods, events and enumerations of the new Framework. Plus see which are new.

http://www.only4gurus.com/v3/index.asp

·         A site with common practices and guidelines for C# and covers a lot of the microsoft products

C# .Net Fun

http://www.dotnetfun.com

ReportViewer Control in Visual Studio 2005

http://www.gotreportviewer.com

Microsoft TechNet

http://technet.microsoft.com

CodeGuru

http://www.codeguru.com

Windows Workflow Foundation

http://www.windowsworkflow.net

MSDN .NET Framework

http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework

Microsoft Learning Visual Studio 2005

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/visualstudio2005

There are literally hundreds of others!  I welcome your feedback on your favorites, so they can be included on the class list!

Blogs

Perhaps the best tool for finding out interesting features of any new technology is the blog.  Despite the reputation of blogs as being ‘online diaries’, they often have excellent insights into technology. The blogs covering .NET are no exception.  Since your second assignment is to discover a good blog covering some topic in the new Framework (or related technology), I’m only going to point you to several good areas to start your search, not any particular blog.

Feedster

http://www.feedster.com

·         An excellent, if a bit slow, blog search tool.  Unlike Google, MSN or other traditional search engines, Feedster primarily indexes blogs.  It’s a great starting point to finding blog entries on a particular topic. (HINT: This is a great place to start for your second assignment…)

MSDN

http://blogs.msdn.com

·         There are several good blogs on MSDN, all of them quite technical.  Another good place to start.

GotDotNet

http://blogs.gotdotnet.com

·         They also have a good blogger community, although many of their bloggers have now moved to MSDN.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System Blogs

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/community/blogs

ASP.NET Blogs

http://weblogs.asp.net

GotDotNet 2.0

http://www.gotdotnet.com

Code Project

http://www.codeproject.com

C# Corner

http://www.csharp-corner.com

Thinktecture

http://blogs.thinktecture.com

Don Box

http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox

Soma’s

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/

·         Blog:  http://blogs.msdn.com/netcfteam/

        This weblog is a collaborative work by the .NET Compact Framework team.